Komen Statement on Planned Parenthood is a PR Move, Not A Policy Reversal

The Susan G. Komen Foundation released a statement moments ago that many are greeting as a reversal of their decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. On Twitter, the Breaking News feed called it a “pledge to continue funding Planned Parenthood,” while Glenn Greenwald called it “an amazing, Internet-driven victory.”

But it’s not.

The new statement does not pledge Komen to reverse its funding decision, and it does not promise Planned Parenthood any new funding. Let’s look at the relevant passage (emphasis mine):

“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”

Komen had never intended to renege on its existing grant commitments to Planned Parenthood, as PP themselves noted in their press release announcing the break between the two organizations (again, emphasis mine):

“In the last few weeks, the Komen Foundation has begun notifying local Planned Parenthood programs that their breast cancer initiatives will not be eligible for new grants (beyond existing agreements or plans).“

Komen’s statement that Planned Parenthood will be “eligible” for new grants is a new development, but it commits Komen to nothing. There’s no reversal of the funding cutoff here, and no promise to reinstate Planned Parenthood funding.

This isn’t a victory. Not yet.

Update | I want to be really clear about what’s going on here. Obviously, Komen has taken a huge amount of heat in the last few days, far more than they’d anticipated, and they’re scrambling to contain the damage. They’re in disarray, and trying to keep this from becoming an even bigger problem for them than it already is. This statement is a reflection of that, and in that sense it’s a good sign. But what they’re hoping this will do is take the spotlight off, and if it has that effect, they’ll have a lot of room to maneuver later. So folks who want to see Planned Parenthood refunded need to be extremely skeptical, and extremely loud in voicing their skepticism, in the near future. Keep the pressure on, keep pushing for concrete concessions. That’s the next step.

Second Update | Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards has released a response to the Komen announcement. An excerpt:

“In recent weeks, the treasured relationship between the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation and Planned Parenthood has been challenged, and we are now heartened that we can continue to work in partnership toward our shared commitment to breast health for the most underserved women. We are enormously grateful that the Komen Foundation has clarified its grantmaking criteria, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Komen partners, leaders and volunteers.”

Richards is claiming victory, in other words, without suggesting that PP has been given any specific assurances on funding. All the more reason to keep the heat on.

I’ll be sticking with this story as it develops. Feel free to follow me on Twitter for all the latest.

Third Update | A little more explication. First, on the eligibility question: yes, Komen has restored Planned Parenthood’s “eligibility” to apply for grants, but all that means is that PP can submit a request for funding. Without knowing what criteria Komen will use for evaluating those grant requests, and whether they’re actually committed to restoring the PP revenue stream, it’s impossible to say what significance this has. Again, yes, it’s a victory, but so far it’s a victory of spin and messaging, not of actual dollars and cents.

Second, there’s the question of whether the new Komen position indicates that PP is likely to be reinstated as a Komen grantee. I don’t have any particular inside info, but from where I sit, yes, it’s likely, particularly given the media (mis)reading of the statement as well as PP’s (very savvy) response. It seems clear that cutting off PP down the line would be a PR disaster for Komen, and my guess is they’d rather put this behind them. But likelihood isn’t certitude, and things can change. We just don’t know what Komen’s plans are. All we have is what they’ve said. And what they’ve said so far is carefully crafted to leave the option of defunding PP very much alive.

Fourth Update | The president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute calls Komen’s statement “nothing new. We have known and have reported that they are continuing five grants through 2012. This is a reference to that. The second clause about eligibility is certainly true. Any group can apply for anything. It does not mean they are going to get anything.”

Fifth Update | It’s worth remembering that according to one Komen staffer, the group’s new “grant-making criteria were adopted with the deliberate intention of targeting Planned Parenthood.”

Sixth Update | Greg Sargent of the Washington Post got a Komen board member on the phone, and he said that “it would be highly unfair to ask us to commit to any organization that doesn’t go through a grant process that shows that the money we raise is used to carry out our mission. … Tell me you can help carry out our mission and we will sit down at the table.”

“It would be highly unfair to ask us to commit to any organization.” That’s pretty cold, particularly in contrast with Cecile Richards’ “we look forward to continuing our partnership.”

Seventh Update (Saturday morning) | Several commenters have suggested that it would be inappropriate for Komen to promise to restore funding to Planned Parenthood, given the nature of their funding process. A few things about that.

First, whether Komen should have made such a pledge or not is a separate question from whether they did, and many in the media are still incorrectly reporting that such a pledge was made. Right now, for instance, the front page of the New York Times website declares falsely that “the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation apologized for its decision to cut grants to Planned Parenthood for cancer screening and said it would restore the funding.”

Second, there’s plenty Komen could do short of making a formal commitment to circumvent the application process to indicate that their intention is to work to restore the funding. They could say “we look forward to supporting Planned Parenthood’s work in the future.” They could say “our relationship with Planned Parenthood remains important to us.” They could say number of things, none of which they’ve said so far. In fact, and I think this is worth underscoring, their initial statement yesterday included nothing positive about Planned Parenthood at all. Not a word. As far as I’m aware, no subsequent official statement has either.

Komen originally said Planned Parenthood would not be eligible for future grants and now they are saying they will be eligible for future grants. It’s hard to see that as not a clear reversal unless you are trying to see it that way.

Sure there is no guarantee that PP will be granted any future funds, but there was never any guarantee to begin with. If all you’re saying is that given their right wing stance we should be skeptical that they will ever do so again then I would agree with you. But even having them back off of the rhetorical stance against PP and repeal the absolute banning of PP ever receiving future funds I’d say is a substantial victory. The prior situation might have emboldened other private sector entities to cut off PP. This turn of events will make them think twice.

“Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation,” she added. “We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.”

It’s spinning. Yes. However, they are going to have to back it up when they have this on their 3-Day Community board (and this is a little bit more specific):

The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Followed by, in the comments, this:

Does that mean you are reversing your position on donations to Planned Parenthood? Please be clear.
22 minutes ago · Like · 4

Susan G. Komen 3-Day Yes.
22 minutes ago · Like · 19

So, what does this mean? Well, a subtle change. They agreed to change their POLICY CRITERIA and that change, supposedly, will allow them to continue PP. That, however, remains to be seen.

“But on Friday, Komen said that it would ‘amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.'”

This should shrink the loophole that would encourage politicians to open federal investigations in the hopes of disqualifying organizations from grant funding. However, I’m not exactly sure what criteria they are going to use to qualify an investigation as “conclusive” rather than “political”. Magic 8 Ball?

With respect, I think you’re wrong. I think Komen vastly underestimated the crapstorm they set themselves up for, in the name of fiscal due diligence, and had learned it can’t defund Planned Parenthood without doing serious damage to their image and ability to raise money. Yes, there is some wiggle room in the language, but I think they know now they’d be shooting themselves in the feet to try and use it. People are going to be watching, people with Facebook accounts and lots of friends who take part in those “cure” events, and who love and respect Planned Parenthood.

[…] Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and Planned Parenthood, and breast cancer. Now that Komen has caved (sort of; Planned Parenthood’s response), we might start to learn what it will take to mobilize an […]

We respect your opinion but maybe is good for all of you understand the grantmaking process. We can’t categorically say that from now on and forever Planned Parenthood will receive funds because we have, as all funding organizations have, a grant review process. Each year 30 or 40 non-profit organizations present their proposals asking for funds and an independent review committee (people from the community with no ties with the organization) review the grants and score them based on the needs established in a Community Profile. The Community Profile is prepared by an independent organization. Then the Board of Directors (all volunteers) approved the recommendations based on the funds available. Remember that Komen isn’t an endowment organization. Each year we have to raise the funds that we assign to the community. Each affiliate is responsible to raise the money for their community. We don’t receive funds from national.

So we need to be fair not only with Planned Parenthood but with the other 30 or 40 organizations. All of them have the same opportunity to apply for the funds and will be evaluate with the same criteria and guidelines.

At no point in the press release does Brinker promise that Komen will renew grants to Planned Parenthood.Politricks should NEVER have interfered with Whole Women’s Health.Recieving a spontaneous txt message does NOT change the FACTS.

So
Komen’s “Million Dollar Council Family”

Boycott time. Let your dollars do the talking. For the Komen Decision, let it be SILENCE for the following companies:

[…] Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and Planned Parenthood, and breast cancer. Now that Komen has caved (sort of; Planned Parenthood’s response), we might start to learn what it will take to mobilize an outcry […]

For those that think that Komen has realized it can’t stop funding PP now even if they want to, I don’t think it is necessarily true they have realized that.

What they may be hoping is by the time it comes to give another grant, people will have moved on and focused on other stuff (and sadly they could very well be right, people have short attention spans and will have something new to be upset about) and won’t notice when they refuse the grant.

Wow. What is all of this backlash and teeth gnashing I read here if not political. Komen had to know that they were treading dangerously by supporting PP to start with, an organization, which whether or not you agree, is looked upon by a huge number of people as being a merchant of death (at least to the unborn children who have no say in what happens to them). Komen will lose out no matter what happens.

No funder is going to commit to future funding decisions in advance. But I agree this won’t be resolved this week or next, and it’s important to keep our eyes and ears open.

More important than the actual funding decisions is the intense scrutiny of Komen caused by their actions. Not many people I know had any indication of their dark side, only their pink exterior. Now, many of us have seen the executive compensation on their IRS 990 form (over $450,000 for the director, with a significant list of other staff earning half that on down to low six figures, many of them for only a few months work). No one’s taken a vow of poverty to work there, but still.

We’ve also heard about their other political shenanigans on a pretty broad range of issues related and seemingly unrelated to women’s health. The ways they’ve chosen to spend their money have been questioned. Corporate involvement is also problematic in several cases.

This year’s walks and other public events may not be as successful because of this public uproar, and Planned Parenthood has already received an impressive financial windfall from the scandal. This trend may continue in 2012 and beyond. Whether or not Komen can rectify the situation without replacing their top management remains to be seen.

Simple question to my friends of the left.
other than planned parenthood that offers mammograms and actual preventative health to women on what basis would your objection be to this? How would that “adversely affect women’s health” if some other organization was acting to help prevent breast cancer in women? How is it betraying the organization’s mission if they are funding programs directly related to their mission to fight breast cancer.

Or is it the interpretation of the left that Planned Parenthood has an absolute right to Komen monies and if they do not get them it stands as a betrayal of woman regardless of anything actually done to prevent breast cancer?

Komen receives its money from those of us in the public who choose to donate, walk, organize, etc. So, if Komen chooses some right-wing ideology over the health of all women, we can find another foundation to help prevent and work for a cure for breast cancer.

datechguy, I think it’s a competitive marketplace for grantmaking, and all organizations should feel welcome to submit applications. It’s unfortunate that Komen politicized their role as a funder, but I agree there are other organizations that could competitively apply for grants from the state or local affiliates, and I don’t have any particular objection to funding being awarded to capable players other than Planned Parenthood, as it is now.

Of course, Komen’s grant review process needs to be very transparent from this point forward. Komen has little credibility left with progressives, so I’d be surprised if their donations don’t drop off significantly in 2012, and maybe long afterward, if heads don’t roll because of this fiasco. But this was really just the tip of the iceberg at the national level, and possibly also among some affiliates.

Look the decision to withhold funding was clearly a politically motivated sham to begin with. The real issue here is providing women the ability to safeguard their health. If Komen’s true objective is to ensure women are provided preventitive health care, in an effort to eliminate breast cancer then they should have taken the moral high ground and proclaimed the platitude that gets the most lip service in America… “innocent until proven guilty”, and never made this a story in the first place. Instead their decision was to cave to their influential Conservative donors and do the reverse, by publically stating they were going to stop their funding of PP.

Now I realize the point you are trying to make but you sound like one of those crazy Conservative conspiracy theorists. I feel fairly confident that if funding is stopped to PP, by the Komen foundation, it will make headline news. Not to mention you will be following this story closely.

Y’know, I wonder if The SGK Foundation actually takes into account how Susan G. Komen herself would feel when such decisions like this are made. Wasn’t this “charity” supposed to be founded in her honor and memory? Susan herself is probably rolling in her grave right now. What makes me even more sick is that this foundation has turned into more of a corporation than a non-profit organization.

Not only that, her name is now more tarnished than Chris Brown’s. It’s really sad when a woman who probably had a good heart and bold determination when she was alive gets a posthumously tainted name, thanks to jerks like Karen Handel.

Your title is misleading. You have absolutely no information in your article that is relative to this being a PR scheme, and only mention it in passing as a possible future issue.
If it is a PR ploy – who benefits from it? PP was the group who received a huge boost in donations, but SGK was cutting funding from them for their own agenda, not to help PP. They felt the pressure from the pro-lifers and the far Right, so they did as they did. They didn’t have thousands of dollars come in after the announcement as PP did. They received so much negative attention that they, once again, faltered to pressure. Negative PR for a nonprofit is not good PR the way it is for the famous.
So when you throw out that this was some sort of PR ploy, you need to have information to back it up, which you don’t.

Allison: “Komen has taken a huge amount of heat in the last few days, far more than they’d anticipated, and they’re scrambling to contain the damage. They’re in disarray, and trying to keep this from becoming an even bigger problem for them than it already is.”

All competitive grants must go through an application and review process. So if all community programs must apply to SGK before receiving funds by showing how they would use the money and measure success, then yes, I think it would have been unfair for SGK to promise the money to PP without making them go through the same application process as every other organization receiving money from SGK. I think your article is slightly misleading by not mentioning this. With that said, it will be interesting to see if they try another stunt like this by altering the review process to intentionally de-fund PP. I certainly do not trust SGK anymore, but I think this is technically a reversal on the action SGK originally took which was to make PP ineligible for future grant applications.

[…] Parenthood may be more a pr stunt than a guarantee they will fund Planned Parenthood in the future. Blogger Angus Johnston’s careful parsing of their statement uncovers that it only guarantees paying existing grants in full, […]

Keep in mind they will need to balance keeping the folks that supported Komen for cutting off PP with a way to come out more favorable in the eyes of all the opposers. If they say they will support PP and continue to fund them, they will also lose many on the opposing side as well. No doubt they are between a rock and a hard place! Lost donations all around I’m sure. I wonder how many regret bringing on Karen Handle?

@datechguy (and others thinking some other provider will just step up using Komen’s funding and fill the void for breast exams currently provided by Planned Parenthood):

In my opinion, the reasons that Planned Parenthood is an important provider are: 1) they provide health clinics in under-served areas (like low-income and/or rural areas), and 2) they provide important health services way beyond breast exams, and serve both men and women.

And so, if Planned Parenthood did not have enough funding and closed clinics, that would mean men and women living in those under-served areas might not have anywhere else to get the kind of health care they need (that’s what “under-served” means). More specifically to the Komen relationship, many women in under-served areas without Planned Parenthood clinics would not get breast exams, and some of them would die as a result. And some those women would die from things other than breast cancer, because women’s health care is about much more than breasts, wouldn’t you agree?

Thank you for clarifying this issue and following it. I have absolutely no confidence in the reversal
I believe the unfunding of PP was the first step in dismantling them. Once breast care was no longer available the pathway was clear to make the political argument that PP is primarily an abortion provider. It is very suspect that the current SGK CEO is a Republican politician of decided far right agenda.If it is true that PP does not have their own mobile mammogram capabilities, we should do all that is necessary to fund that need

Thank you for clarifying this issue and following it. I have absolutely no confidence in the reversal
I believe the unfunding of PP was the first step in dismantling them. Once breast care was no longer available the pathway was clear to make the political argument that PP is primarily an abortion provider. It is very suspect that the current SGK CEO is a Republican politician of decided far right agenda.If it is true that PP does not have their own mobile mammogram capabilities, we should do all that is necessary to fund that need.The more that we can strengthen PP’s ability to provide broad comprehensive care to women the less vulnerable it will be to right wing pro-life rhetoric and political agenda

[…] Parenthood may be more a pr stunt than a guarantee they will fund Planned Parenthood in the future. Blogger Angus Johnston’s careful parsing of their statement uncovers that it only guarantees paying existing grants in full, […]